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Groovy for Domain-Specific Languages, Second Edition

Groovy for Domain-Specific Languages, Second Edition

By : Dearle
4.7 (3)
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Groovy for Domain-Specific Languages, Second Edition

Groovy for Domain-Specific Languages, Second Edition

4.7 (3)
By: Dearle

Overview of this book

The times when developing on the JVM meant you were a Java programmer have long passed. The JVM is now firmly established as a polyglot development environment with many projects opting for alternative development languages to Java such as Groovy, Scala, Clojure, and JRuby. In this pantheon of development languages, Groovy stands out for its excellent DSL enabling features which allows it to be manipulated to produce mini languages that are tailored to a project’s needs. A comprehensive tutorial on designing and developing mini Groovy based Domain Specific Languages, this book will guide you through the development of several mini DSLs that will help you gain all the skills needed to develop your own Groovy based DSLs with confidence and ease. Starting with the bare basics, this book will focus on how Groovy can be used to construct domain specific mini languages, and will go through the more complex meta-programming features of Groovy, including using the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST). Practical examples are used throughout this book to de-mystify these seemingly complex language features and to show how they can be used to create simple and elegant DSLs. Packed with examples, including several fully worked DSLs, this book will serve as a springboard for developing your own DSLs.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
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1
1. Introduction to DSLs and Groovy
13
Index

Command chains


We already knew that Groovy allows us to leave out parentheses when calling methods. Another neat trick introduced in Groovy 1.8 is the ability to leave out the dot when we chain method calls. Using this feature, we can further improve the readability of our DSLs by adding constructs that mimic natural language. Take the following chained method calls:

deposit (100.00).currency(USD).to(savings)

By leaving out the parentheses on these calls and the intervening dots we can express this chain as follows:

deposit 100.00 currency GBP to savings

Building this mini DSL is relatively straightforward. First we need an enum for currencies, which we statically import. We also define two method calls, convert and deposit:

enum Currency { USD, GBP, EUR }

class Account {
    double balance
}

static def convert ( currency, amount) {
    def result
    switch (currency) {
    case Currency.USD: result = amount
        break
    case Currency.GBP: result = amount * 1.3
        break
    case...

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